Vicki L. Sato

Vicki L. Sato, Ph.D, is Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, and an affiliate member of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Harvard University. She has taught in HBS Executive Education programs. She is a business advisor to enterprises in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.

Dr. Sato retired in 2005 from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, where she served as President since 2000, with responsibility for research and development, business and corporate development, commercial operations, legal, and finance. Prior to becoming President, she was Chief Scientific Officer, Senior Vice President of Research and Development, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board. Under her leadership, Vertex created a diversified pipeline of drugs.

Before joining Vertex, Dr. Sato was Vice President of Research at Biogen, Inc, where she led research programs in the areas of inflammation, thrombosis, and HIV disease, and participated in the executive management of the company. Several molecules from those programs have now reached the marketplace. She also served as a member of the Biogen Scientific Board.

Currently, Dr. Sato is a member of the Board of Directors of publicly held companies Bristol Myers Squibb Company, PerkinElmer Corporation, Borg Warner Corporation, and the venture-phase companies Syros Pharmaceuticals and Neurophage. She has served as an overseer of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Dr. Sato received her AB from Radcliffe College, and her AM and PHD degrees from Harvard University. Following postdoctoral work at both the University of California Berkeley and Stanford Medical Center, Dr. Sato was appointed to the faculty of Harvard University, where she was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Biology.

In June 2003, Harvard University and MIT announced an unprecedented partnership to create a biomedical institute, The Broad Institute. The culture of the Broad centered on science, and those involved considered it to be at the edge of the scientific frontier. In just four years the Broad had made many important scientific contributions to the biomedical field. These included understanding genetic alterations in cancer; building an RNAi Consortium to better understand the role of every gene in the human body; creating an integrated database that mapped the connections among drugs, genes, and diseases; and cataloging inherited genetic variations of Type 2 Diabetes. Opportunities for additional important scientific advances beckoned but would require both funding and physical space. The Broad Institute's leaders, including Altshuler, Director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics, and Golub, Director of the Cancer Program, needed to decide how big was too big. How many projects could the Broad productively support? What happened when the Broad outgrew its physical space? Altshuler and Golub knew that the Broad had made tremendous strides in the past year. It had minimized barriers and attracted many young scientists who viewed the Broad as an exciting place to do research. That success made the question of how to balance the priorities of growth and the preservation of the culture that had made everything possible all the more important.

As the head of the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in China, En Li was shepherding a $1 billion R&D investment in China. So far he had been able to attract a large number of Chinese-born but US-trained scientists to play a critical role in establishing the site. How sustainable was this strategy, and what were the key things he had to do right to establish a globally integrated R&D unit in China?

Bristol Myers Squibb, a multi-national pharmaceutical company, is seeking to globalize its R&D strategy while managing costs. It has formed a joint venture with an Indian company, which has worked well, but now faces a strategic decision on how and whether to continue.

The Langer Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was a unique operation. Its head, Robert Langer, had always focused on selecting ideas to research that would have the greatest positive impact for humanity, and he encouraged an unusual multidisciplinary approach at the lab, fostering collaboration between scientists from many diverse backgrounds. The approach led to exciting discoveries and innovations at the Langer Lab. Besides his intelligence, Langer's personality—expansive, magnanimous, and intensely curious—enticed many potential applicants. The lab also had a very strong working relationship with MIT's Technology Licensing Office, which wrote patents for all of the innovations created at the university. What lessons can be drawn from the Langer Lab about the management of research groups? How did the Langer Lab sustain innovation? Could the Langer Lab's processes successfully be imitated elsewhere?

When Bruce Wayne hired Anthony Starks, he thought he had hit a homerun by getting the most brilliant and passionate scientist-leader in the field to be his CSO. But a few months in, Wayne and Starks begin to clash over crucial forward-looking decisions about the direction of the company. As CEO, Wayne needs to make tough decisions about how to manage his passionate but increasingly unpredictable CSO.

The leader of a pioneering biotech company in the siRNA space weighs his options for scaling production capacity in advance of an anticipated commercial launch. Operational complexity and relative merits of in-house manufacturing versus a contractor model are discussed.

Research Summary

Research interests are focused on issues of innovation and productivity as they relate to improved outcomes in biotechnology and pharmaceutical R and D. These span topics from decision-making, organizational structure and communication, to the development of novel technologies that could impact current roadblocks in drug discovery.

Teaching

Since coming to HBS, my teaching interests have centered around the intersection of science and business: entrepreneurship, management, and strategy. More recently, i have become more engaged in considering the emergence of new university models for the translation of basic scientific discovery into commercial enterprise, and have engaged with both the university and the private sector in this analysis.